CRAWFORD | Road work: Rozier cleaning up away from home as Cards head to BC

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Quick, what are University of Louisville sophomore Terry Rozier's two favorite words?

Answer: Road trip.

All right, that's not quite cleared through Rozier, but the stat sheet comes close to confirming it. In six road or neutral games this season, Rozier has averaged 24.2 points, shot 54.7 percent from the field (52 of 95), and averaged 3.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists.

“Terry likes the road,” said senior point guard Chris Jones.

Well put. He'll get a chance to earn some more travel points on Wednesday when the Cardinals visit Boston College for a scheduled 9:06 p.m. tipoff. The city was hit with 23 inches of snow over the past couple of days, but U of L sports information director Kenny Klein said the team plans to take off around midday on Wednesday to get to Chestnut Hill, Mass., in time for tipoff.

Rosier had 18 points in the first half at Pittsburgh Sunday, but Pitino says his whole team has played well on the road.

“Obviously, when you have Terry having the type of half he had, everything looks great, no matter what you run,” Pitino said Monday night on his weekly radio show on the U of L Sports Network from Learfield Sports. “. . . We've been good on the road for the past four years. I think families come in for the road games, and you get guys playing sometimes for the wrong reasons, trying to impress the fans, impress their families, but they lose focus on the fundamentals on what they have to do to beat the opponent, if I had to put my finger on one thing.”

Rosier is shooting nearly 52 percent from two-point range on the season (59 percent in road games), and Pitino said the mid-range game that he and Jones bring has developed into a major feature of the offense.

“Terry is a great mid-range shooter,” Pitino said. “He's just a flat-out great player. He does a lot of great things.”

Pitino praised both Rozier and Jones not only for their scoring, but for heading the press, playing major minutes, and for getting five rebounds each.

Boston College comes into the game at 9-9, 1-5 in ACC play after a tough early schedule in the league. The Eagles have close losses to Syracuse and Pittsburgh, but also have played Duke, Miami and Virginia. They're coming off their first ACC win of the season, at Georgia Tech.

Junior guard Olivier Hanlan leads the Eagles with 16.8 points per game, fifth-best in the ACC, and his 4.5 assists per game are seventh in the ACC. He's one of only two players in the ACC to rank among the top 10 in scoring, assists and steals. The other is Jones for U of L.

QUICK HITS:

— Pitino went on a short riff about officiating during his weekly radio show, but it's worth listening to. He's been rankled since watching the tape of the Duke game, and revisited it Monday.

“It really bugs the hell out of me what's going on with officiating,” Pitino told the host of his radio show, Paul Rogers. “Like Chris Jones against Duke — got two fouls. Neither one was a foul. He took the ball away from the young man, grabbed it with two hands, didn't foul him. Then he was blocking out, and the offensive player got the rebound, and they called both fouls being out of position. (Sunday) Wayne Blackshear's fourth and fifth fouls were phantom calls. He just had his hands up on his fifth foul, hands up on his fourth foul, and they take a player out of the game. My No. 1 beef with officiating is not block-charge calls, is not whether it's a flagrant-not flagrant. But don't take great players, good players out of games. Don't do that. If you don't see a foul, don't call it. … It's really, I've felt that the officiating has been really lacking in a lot of areas this year. I'm really upset about it.”

— Pitino will return to Boston for the first time since leaving as president and head coach of the Boston Celtics. He played at UMass, got his first college head-coaching job at Boston U. and coached the Celtics from 1997 till 2001.

— Louisville has a 47-26 record in conference games on the road over the last nine seasons (.644), claiming the best road record in both the Big East and AAC during its time in those two leagues.